‘Reading Together’ for the Nuance: Transgender Themes and Politics in Two Tunisian Novels from the 1990s

Tunisian literature is only rarely studied and if it receives research attention the analysis has a monolingual focus. This article instead reads together French and Arabic works to contextualise them. Presented are: Hurlement (Screaming, 1992) by Alia Mabrouk and Ṭurshqāna (Ṭurshqāna, 1999) by Masʾūda Bū Bakr. According to the general narrative, the Arab world gave up on politics in the 1990s due to a sense of defeat and the lack of alternatives to the ruling parties’ authoritarianism. Contrary to such narratives, however, a close ‘reading together’ of the two works will bring forth political nuances.